NaNoWriMo Tip #24: Signs Your Novel Is Waving Red Flags

Beyoncé leads a post-apocalyptic revolution. In lingerie, as one does.

These are my personal tips for
NaNoWriMo. You know the drill. Take only what works.

Writer’s block is almost always a red flag warning
you about some problem with the novel. (The only other cause for writer’s block
is severe personal stress, which may be negative, like a divorse, or positive,
like a move, but either way absorbs all your mental energy. However, that’s
outside the scope of these Tips. If you are in such a situation, give yourself
a break and take care of the issue first.)

One of these red
flags, and one that I’ve faced many times, is Ignorance. You sit down ready to
write a scene…it’s right there in your outline… it should be no problem. You
lift your fingers, like a piano prodigy, to wrest sweet story music from your
keyboard, and…

Nothing.

The scene is not
working because there’s something that’s stumping you. For me, it’s often
something like the place and time of the scene. Sometimes it’s a deeper problem
though. Occasionally, it’s something god-awful like a Plot Abyss At The Heart
of the Whole Damn Book. (Shudder.)

Here are a couple
of typical problems waiting to ambush you:

1. Logistical Problems.

Logistical issues
trip me up all the time. This should have been ironed out a long time ago
thanks to prepping my Map and Calendar, but I may have (1) neglected to do
that, or (2) changed some critical thing in the plot that makes the map or
calendar obsolete or (3) realize as I sit down to write the scene that what I
planned so carefully was completely idiotic. It makes no sense, but I’ve
already written the previous scenes that way, and now how am I going to make
sense of it? Are they on the West slope or the East slope? Is it day or night?
Is she wearing pants or a skirt? Are there five or seven goblins, and are they
armed with spears or swords?

It’s amazing how
much trivial crap like this can mess me up.

2. Character Issues.

A worse problem
occurs when I’m about to write a scene and realize that I have no idea why my
character is doing X. Usually that’s because I don’t know my character well
enough—he’s a minor character, perhaps, there for plot purposes, who is still a
cipher to me—or because I do know my character, and know he wouldn’t do X. Yet X he must.

Deep inside, the
Three Laws of Wribotics won’t allow me to harm or by inaction allow harm to
come to the basic integrity of my Character’s character, so if I command myself
to do so, my head implodes.

3. Plot Holes.

A third kind of
problem is the inverse of the above. I have some marvelous scene in which my
characters have an exciting and dramatic conflict…and no logical way to include
it. My plotroad has more plotholes than a country lane.

The absolute worst
case scenario—and I have weathered it and lived to tell the tale—is if I
realize that the entire premise of my book makes
no sense at all. Now, it’s in order
to spare you this Horror From Beyond that I’ve suggested outlining your novel a
thousand different ways before writing it, to discover any such Abysmal threats
long before you’ve written 35,000 words. But. Maybe you didn’t listen to that,
or maybe you somehow overlooked the Gaping Chasm of Logic until now by sheer
blind stubbornness.

If any of these
situations has befallen you, first let me pat you on the back and reassure you.

There, there. It’s
all going to be okay.

It can be fixed.
All you have to do is apply the Universal Remedy for all Writing Problems.
Okay, chocolate, but that’s not where I was going. I mean, of course,
brainstorming.

Sit down and
brainstorm the logistics. Consult your map, or, if you skipped that stage, you
bad child, draw one.

Sit down and
brainstorm about who this character is and what motivates him. If he would
never do this, ask what would make
him do this, or what he would do instead.

Sit down and
brainstorm the plot possibilities.

As always when you
brainstorm, throw out the first few cliché and obvious ideas. Don’t take the
easy way out, either.

1. If your problem is logistical, don’t
leave it vague and hope no one will notice.

Example: “Julie
wasn’t sure how far she ran, but soon she reached the gas station…”

Julie can be unsure how far she ran, but you
should have a clue.

2. If your problem is character motivation,
don’t insert an inexplicable mood swing.

Example: “Normally,
Julie was hard working and never broke any rules, but today, for no reason at
all, she decided to smoke weed on the pier while shooting pigeons with a BB
gun.”

The reader will
assume you are being ironic, that Julie is actually lazy and slightly wacked,
not that she is normally hardworking. This works only if you are trying to be a
smart aleck. Or if you have established a damn good reason for Julie’s
character to change so dramatically.

Example: “Half way
through the fight, Julie suddenly remembered her third grade Hapkido classes
and defeated the five ninjas. She rushed to the computer. How would she break
in? Suddenly she remembered her seventh grade nerd boyfriend who had taught her
and how to hack high security government computers.”

Just because a bunch of Hollywood B-movies jump off this cliff, does that mean you have to do it too?

Links

Affiliate Disclosure

Some, although not all, of the links on this blog are affiliate links. This means that if you buy anything via these links I get a very tiny amount of commission. Like if 20% of you bought a book from these links it might cover one month of Netflix. So thank you. :)